Rahm Emanuel’s Social Media Presence

Mayor Emanuel likes to boast that he’s tech-savvy, particularly when it comes to social media. In the last year, he’s hired a chief technology officer, a chief data officer, and a director of social media; hosted the first town hall meeting via Facebook in a major city; helped make Chicago the first U.S. city to have a Foursquare badge; launched a Google Plus page (also the first U.S. mayor to do so); and generally tweeted and updated all about town.

It’s all part of what Kevin Hauswirth, the mayor’s director of social media, calls Emanuel’s “360 degrees of engagement” with city residents. The mayor, says Hauswirth, is not obsessed with his friends or follower statistics or click-throughs or retweets. “He wants to make sure that what we’re putting out there is relevant to what folks really want to hear.”

Given Emanuel’s fondness for f-bombs, it is probably a good thing that he mostly leaves his Facebook messaging and tweets to his aides. Which probably explains why they are usually dry policy statements that seem right out of the mayor’s press office. Stuff like this, from Twitter: